It must have caused heartburn for many in the media when Donald Trump, the most "racist" president they know of, recently pardoned the first black heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. After President Barack Obama, with eight years in the White House, had refused to clear the late boxer's name! Jesse Washington, a writer for The Undefeated, helped the Left save face--by accusing Trump's attorney general of reviving policies that lead to mass incarceration of blacks.
Washington acknowledged that it took a white president to pardon Jack Johnson, who was arrested for having sex with white women and violating the Mann Act more than 100 years ago. But of course there are extenuating circumstances that can't be overlooked, and Trump must be denied an opportunity to break into his happy dance.
"Barack Obama wouldn’t touch it, to the dismay and puzzlement of many," Washington writes before excusing away a missed opportunity for the former president:
"Obama focused his pardon power on living people unjustly imprisoned by the racially biased policies of mass incarceration."
Washington admitted that Johnson "viciously beat at least one of his white girlfriends" and, "Even though Johnson was wrongfully imprisoned under a Jim Crow law designed to police interracial sex, the first black president ignored pleas to exonerate the long-dead boxer."
Busting the left's myth of Trump as racist, the current president boasted, “We righted a wrong.” He made the pardon at the request of Johnson's descendants, current heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder, former champ Lennox Lewis and actor Sylvester Stallone (all appearing in above photo). Washington responded with a "but monkey" in hopes of taking the wind out of Trump's sails:
"There are many ironies in Trump’s decision, starting with the president being elected despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct and assault. Add that Obama was handcuffed, to some extent, by a double standard that holds African-Americans accountable for all black sins while allowing whites to be judged as individuals. And Johnson’s gaudy lifestyle bears more similarities to Trump’s than to Obama’s.
Thus, Obama gets a pass and Trump's Administration gets an accusation over-riding anything laudable he's done on behalf of Johnson and his descendants:
"But the saddest point is that while Obama used his pardons to free those victimized by mass incarceration, Trump’s Justice Department, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is reviving policies on criminal charges that disastrously and disproportionately packed American prisons with blacks and Latinos.
"Trump just freed the memory of one black man who died 72 years ago. How many living black men are now headed to the place where Jack Johnson never should have been?"
While liberals in the media, NFL protesters and the ACLU constantly harp about mass incarceration, Stephanos Bibas wrote an excellent rebuttal to the charge of race-based law enforcement on National Review Online in 2015. He made the point that, "As several prominent black scholars have emphasized, law-abiding blacks often want more and better law enforcement, not less."
